POEMS WRITTEN IN YOUTH * SONNET-TO SCIENCE. SCIENCE! true daughter of Old Time thou art! How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, * Private reasons-some of which have reference to the sin of plagiarism, and others to the date of Tennyson's first poems-have induced me, after some hesitation, to re-publish these, the crude compositions of my earliest boyhood. They are printed verbatim—without alteration from the original edition—the date of which is too remote to be judiciously acknowledged. VOL. II.-5. E. A. P. AL AARAAF.* PART I. O! NOTHING earthly save the ray Yet all the beauty-all the flowers That list our Love, and deck our bowers Adorn yon world afar, afar The wandering star. 'Twas a sweet time for Nesace-for there Near four bright suns-a temporary rest— * A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which appeared suddenly in t heavens attained, in a few days, a brilliancy surpassing that of Jupiter-the.. as suddenly disappeared, and has never been seen since. Away-away-'mid seas of rays that roll To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode, Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth, Whence sprang the "Idea of Beauty" into birth. (Falling in wreaths thro' many a startled star, Like woman's hair 'mid pearls, until, afar, It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt) She look'd into Infinity-and knelt. Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled Fit emblems of the model of her world Seen but in beauty--not impeding sight Of other beauty glittering thro' the light--g *And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam'd- (The fabled nectar that the heathen knew) She fears to perfume, perfuming the night: And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth— * This flower is much noticed by Lewenhoeck and Tournefort. The bee. feeding upon its blossom, becomes intoxicated. + Clytia-The Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, or, to employ a better-known term, the turnsol-which turns continually towards the sun, covers itself, like Peru, the country from which it comes, with dewy clouds which cool and refresh its flowers during the most violent heat of the day.-B. de St. Pierre. There is cultivated in the king's rden at Paris, a species of serpentine aloes without prickles, whose large and beautiful flower exhales a strong odour of the vanilla, during the time of its expansion, which is very short. It does not blow till towards the month of July-you then perceive it gradually open its petals expand them-fade and die.-St. Pierre. *And Valisnerian lotus thither flown From struggling with the waters of the Rhone : And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given "Spirit! that dwellest where, In the deep sky, The terrible and fair, Beyond the line of blue The boundary of the star Of thy barrier and thy bar Of the barrier overgone By the comets who were cast From their pride, and from their throne To be carriers of fire (The red fire of their heart) With speed that may not tire And with pain that shall not part There is found, in the Rhone, a beautiful lily of the Valisnerian kind. Its stem will stretch to the length of three or four feet-thus preserving its head above water in the swellings of the river. + The Hyacinth. It is a fiction of the Indians, that Cupid was first seen floating in one of these down the river Ganges-and that he still loves the cradle of his childhood. ◊ And golden vials full of odors which are the prayers of the saints.—Rev St. John. |